Why couldn't Jesus be a daughter of God?

The obvious first answer is, well of course God could have incarnated as a woman! God is all-powerful, so yes - absolutely. I think though, to answer this question with integrity, we have to go all the way back to Genesis to deconstruct the male/female binary we have created as humans:

Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth.”

God created humanity in God’s own image,
in the divine image God created them,
male and female God created them.

 Genesis 1: 26-27 (CEB) 

From the very beginning, the ancient writers understood the entity of God to be both male and female. 

Throughout scripture, God is described with what we might consider, in our binary constructed world, male or female characteristics. 

Here are a few examples of God's "feminine" attributes: 

• Like a nursing mother, God does not forget God's children. (Isaiah 49:15)
• God is like a midwife who cares for children she just delivered (Psalm 22:9-10)
• God experiences the fury of a mother bear robbed of her cubs (Hosea 13:8)
• God seeks the lost like a housekeeper, trying to find her lost coin (Luke 15:8-10)
• Jesus longed for the people of Jerusalem like a mother hen longs to gather her chicks under her wings (Luke 13:34)

In Hebrew, God's characteristic of All-Wisdom is personified as a woman. In Proverbs 8, Wisdom speaks:

The Lord created me at the beginning of his way,

    before his deeds long in the past.

23 

I was formed in ancient times,

    at the beginning, before the earth was.

24 

Proverbs 8: 22-23 (CEB)  (I would highly recommend really all of Proverbs 8, its super good)

Before God created anything tangible, God created Wisdom - the second of God's attributes, the first debatably being Creator.  

All throughout Scripture, both in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin - the word Wisdom itself is feminine.  

In Hebrew is חָכְמָה (hokmaw)
In Greek: σοφία (sophia)

Latin: sapientia 

Jesus has every characteristic of God, including wisdom and presents in a male body. Feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson says in her book She Who IS: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, "Jesus is the supreme manifestation of God's Word (that which creates) and embodiment of Divine Wisdom. It expresses an alternative to the male imagery of God." (1992, paraphrase mine). Theologian Martin Scott says, "Jesus Sophia is not a mere man, but rather the incarnation of both the male and female expression of the divine, albeit within the limitation of the human flesh." (Scott, Sophia and the Johannine Jesus, 1992, 72). 

This is actually a very freeing concept, especially for those who do not identify as either male or female but on a gender spectrum. If Jesus is both/and, then that means trans-men and women are equally sacred. (That's a whole other blog post)

All that is good background information, but why did Jesus have to be a man? Technically, he did not - but the simplest answer for why is because of the societal norms of ancient Palestine in the Greco-Roman world. Women were second-class citizens, and very much the property of their husbands or fathers, or whatever male family member they were in the care of. In Jewish culture, women were much more autonomous than we typically think they were. Unlike their Roman counterparts, they could own their own property. However, they were living under an oppressive authoritarian regime that severely limited their freedoms. 

God is all-knowing and all-wise (all the omnis), so if God incarnated in the physical body of a woman, her chances of carrying out the work of God on earth would NOT have gone as well as it did in the male body. That's not saying it worked out well for Jesus as a man, either. He only got 3 years of ministry before being tried and crucified. 

Followers of Jesus believe God incarnated into the human flesh in order to experience the human condition and to teach us how to live into the free and abundant lives promised to us as children of God. As humans, we have a great capacity to become captive to our own egos that too often take us down paths of darkness or self-destruction. God came to experience the darkness of the world and atoned for all the ways in which we tend to separate ourselves from our great and Holy Creator. It wasn't necessary, but God chose to do so - because we are unconditionally loved, plain and simple. 

I can't help but love my God for all that has been done for me... and everyone else. 💖